Monday, March 13, 2006

What if it's a Scottish accent?

A Republican legistlator from the St. Cloud/Alex area is heading up a bill that would require that all teachers use "clear English pronunciation" before being allowed to teach undergraduate students at the Minnesota State Colleges (it's a recommendation for the U but they can't make it a law there).

Is it just me, or is this clearly an issue with those that have accents and are teaching not being white? Think of Trey's cousin that Samantha hooks up with at Charlotte's first wedding - literally, could barely understand a single word he said. I feel like this bill is certainly to some degree racist - though I might not say 100% because I'll admit it can be hard to understand some teachers.

However, I liked that the article got quotes from students that were like, yeah, after a few classes you get used to it. And how about Bucky from American Idol's accent? His hillbilly Appalacia (sp?) accent is way worse than any accents of teachers at the U. What surprises me is that similar legislation has gone through in 3 other states. Crazy.

3 Comments:

At March 13, 2006 1:12 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can't say I got anything out of the organic chem. lab I took in college that had a Chinese grad asst. as the instructor - he couldn't even say both of my names, let alone answer my questions about the stuff we were doing!

 
At March 14, 2006 1:45 PM, Blogger Laura said...

But let's be serious - even if your organic chem TA spoke textbook English, would you have understood the class???

 
At March 16, 2006 3:55 PM, Blogger Della said...

I believe about half of my tuition at ISU was a complete waste d/t not being able to understand a SINGLE DAMN WORD that my instructors said. Kinda pissed me off. But I have no right because the other half of my tuition was wasted by not going to class and getting drunk instead.

 

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